


a tomorrow when we're not together

by jatersade



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: (everyone who matters anyways), Angst, Friendship Bracelets, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Sort Of, everyone loves Max so much though I promise, referenced/implied child neglect, slight dadvid, slight momgwen, the end of summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 19:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20680517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jatersade/pseuds/jatersade
Summary: The week before summer ends, David teaches Max how to make friendship bracelets.





	a tomorrow when we're not together

Max’s life ends when summer does. He always knew it would be this way, so it doesn’t make sense for him to be so upset now that it’s actually happening.

He tries not to think about it, which usually works for him – if repression camp had been one of the activities planned that summer, he’d have been _ teaching_ that shit. The days keep getting shorter, though, or at least they seem to, and the other idiots he’s stuck here with start talking about school shopping and summer homework and leaving, which was always inevitable, but is still somehow the worst-case scenario.

He doesn’t want to think he’ll actually miss this place. He’ll miss going outside, maybe. He’ll miss the sky and the air and talking to people who haven’t been hired by his parents to live in his house and ignore him, or keep him in line. That kind of thinking comes dangerously close to admitting that he’ll actually miss any of the assholes he’s been forced to spend the summer with, though, which he won’t. Obviously. Not that it matters, anyway – the end is coming no matter what, and there’s nothing Max can do to stop it.

The closer it gets, the worse he feels, and he can tell it’s showing – he snaps more than usual when he deigns to talk at all, he barely looks anyone in the eye anymore, and it sucks, that he’s spending the last of his time at camp slowly driving everyone away, ruining the days he has left because he can’t deal with the fact that they’ll be the last. It makes him feel better and worse at the same time, the way even Neil and Nikki have started to tread so carefully around him.

Three weeks left, and he’s refusing to eat. Two weeks left, and the other campers have completely given up even trying to talk to him. One week left, and David is teaching him how to make friendship bracelets.

-7

He stands outside of Max’s tent and announces himself by calling “Knock, knock!” with so much pep in his voice it would make a high school cheerleading squad jealous. It’s almost like he thinks Max could ever be fooled into believing David actually respects his privacy, though the effect is immediately ruined by David poking his head in to investigate Max's answering silence.

“What are you doing _in my tent_,” Max immediately starts shouting, because that’s the best way he’s figured out so far to make people leave him alone. Well, most people. David had always been different from most people in all of the most annoying ways.

“Well,” David begins, stepping all the way inside and brandishing a textbook sized cardboard box at him, “You’ve seemed a little down lately, so I thought we could try something new!”

This is when Max realizes: David is employing that irritating habit he has of noticing an issue and refusing to ignore it like any polite, well-adjusted person would.

“Something…_new_,” Max repeats, injecting what he hopes is an appropriate amount of venom into his voice.

David winces, just slightly, but it’s nearly undetectable; the smile never leaves his face. “Right! I tried to think of something “low-key,” as you kids like to say – something that wouldn’t take too much effort, but that would be rewarding anyways! And then I found this,” he says, opening the box with a flourish as Max looks on in unrestrained horror, “and thought it would be perfect!”

“Please,” Max says, a little desperately, “please tell me you brought that string into my tent so that I could use it to weave my own noose.”

“Well,” says David thoughtfully, “I suppose they could be considered a sort of small, colorful noose for your wrist!”

“I am _not_ making _friendship bracelets_, David.” _I’d need friends for that,_ he doesn’t say, because if he doesn’t have friends anymore, it’s his own fault for being such an inimitable little asshole, and he knows that David knows it.

“Well,” David allows, “I suppose they don’t technically _have_ to be friendship bracelets.”

Max eyes him warily. “If they’re not friendship bracelets, what’s even the point?”

“Oh,” chirps David, seeming to take this as encouragement, “there are lots of points! It can be something to do when you’re restless, or even just whenever you want to keep your hands busy. You can make things for yourself, or for other people – I thought that with camp ending soon, you might like to make something –”

“Shut _up_,” snaps Max, before David can go any further with _that_ particular thought. “I don’t need your stupid arts and crafts.”

“Arts and crafts aren’t stupid, Max! They’re cornerstones of culture!”

“White suburban mom culture, maybe. Why don’t you leave, like, right now, so that you can go put these up on a Pinterest board for them? Or for whatever other losers have the time for this garbage.”

“Everyone creates, Max,” David chides. “It’s a part of being human! And it doesn’t matter how big or little it is, whether you’re writing plays or playing games or mixing chemicals – all that matters is that you’re creating something new. You’re putting a little bit of yourself out into the world. _And_,” he continues with far too much enthusiasm for something so stupid, “with friendship bracelets, you’re also creating something that you can give to other people to symbolize your friendship with them! Something that reminds them of the good times you had together.”

Max snorts. “Why would I want to do _that_?”

“Because they’ll miss you,” David says, so surely that Max almost misses the way his voice wavers. “We’ll all miss you. And sometimes missing people is easier when you have something to remember them by – or when you know that the people you miss have something they can use to help remember you.”

Max could say something cutting. He could say something that bites harder than Nikki does when she’s feeling particularly feral, something that will make sure that David knows, under no uncertain circumstances, that this was a dumb idea, that David is overstepping, that Max doesn’t want this, doesn’t need this, doesn’t need _them_.

He doesn’t say any of that.

“Is this you fishing for a bracelet, David?” he asks, instead. “If you want one so bad, just make it yourself, jeez. Campbell might be shitty, but he hasn’t actually resorted to child labor.” He pauses uneasily. “Here. Yet, I guess.”

David lets out a laugh, softer than usual, but just as sincere; just as real, because as strange as he is, everything about David is real, up to and including the parts Max had spent the first part of the summer calling unbelievable. “You make the bracelets for whoever you want, Max. Whoever you want to remember.” _Whoever you want to give a part of yourself to_, he doesn’t say. _Whoever you want to let carry a piece of you out into the world with them_. Max hears it anyways.

“As if I’d want to remember anyone in this hellhole,” he says, but he doesn’t leave. He sits back further on the bed and lets David show him all the different ways to tie the same knot a hundred times in a row, until it starts to look something like a pattern.

\- 6

At breakfast the next morning, the rest of the campers are sunburned and sleepy and still smelling like lake water. Max sees a grateful looking David pushing his own cup of coffee closer to Gwen’s plate.

While the rest of camp had apparently spent the day at the docks, Max and David had spent the rest of the previous afternoon in Max’s tent, practicing _(Tie the anchor knot first, and then start on the actual design. Loop it, over and under, all the way around – make sure you pull up, not just out)._

When Nikki asks where he’d been, she looks surprised when he actually answers, and he feels something tighten in his chest; he’ll have to do something about that. _(It’s not a big deal if you mess up – just find the snag. You might have to undo a few stitches, but it’s always fixable)._ He doesn’t tell her that he is now an expert in chevron-patterned bracelets _(one color all the way across before starting in on the next)._ He especially doesn’t tell her that he’s got one half made already, and that he intends to spend the night practicing until he masters the double wave, too.

“Dumb stuff with David,” he responds, and she smiles at him, sympathetic and confused and grateful, all at the same time.

“Sucks,” she replies, but doesn’t say anything else. Neil is refusing to look at him, concentrating too severely on his plate of mystery-mash to be doing anything but purposefully ignoring them, and… yeah. Max has to fix this while he still has the chance.

-5

He does it after lunch the next day, when most of the camp is using their hour of free time to either run wild or sleep off whatever monstrosity Quartermaster had thought appropriate to serve them today. They’re sitting under a tree, an enormous fir only a few paces away from the tents (and he can’t help but be both annoyed and proud that he’s apparently the kind of shmuck who recognizes trees by species now). Neil is reading a book and Nikki is poking at a bug with a stick, but they both look up when he approaches.

“I’m sorry,” Max says without preamble. He digs his hands deeper into his hoodie pocket, clutching at the string and the mostly finished bracelet he’s keeping there. _For them,_ he reminds himself. He’s not being selfish. He’s doing this for them. “For, you know… being a dick,” he continues, when Nikki and Neil just look at him.

“You’re always a dick, Max,” says Neil, but he’s doesn’t sound angry, which Max decides to take as a good sign.

“Yeah,” Nikki agrees, “but that’s one of the things we like about you.”

Max is suddenly so thankful for them that he doesn’t even argue. “Bad judgment on your part, I guess.”

“I mean, sure,” Nikki admits, putting her stick down and sitting up a little further, “but what do you expect from me? I’m a disaster no matter what. Neil, though – he’s the one who’s supposed to be smart. He’s the real disappointment here.’’

“True,” Max nods sagely as Neil shouts _hey!_ beside her, “He really has let all of us down.”

“Trust me,” Neil sputters, “I am _well_ aware of how improbable it is that I actually like either of you for your personalities.”

Max snorts. “About as improbable that we’d like you for yours.” He abruptly feels a sharp jolt of regret, panic flashing at the realization that they haven’t actually forgiven him yet, that they might not, now, because even when he’s trying to do something nice, he still can’t help but be an asshole -

But then Neil sighs. He’d closed his book when Max had started talking, but now he puts it to the side completely. “Yeah,” he says, somehow managing to sound put-upon and fond at the same time, “exactly. We’re all dicks,” he continues, going slightly pink and looking towards the woods, away from the both of them, “but you don’t have to _do_ that. Shutting us out and being even more of a dick. It just makes everything shittier for everyone, especially since…”

“Yeah,” says Max. He clears his throat, rocking back on his heels. “I –”

“God, Neil,” Nikki interrupts, and Max is so grateful he almost laughs. “Stop being so freaking _mushy_. Let’s go put ants in Harrison’s hat, or something. It’s been too long since we got up to any _really_ good mischief.”

“Thank God,” Max mutters, closing his eyes for just a moment.

“It’s been five days, maximum,” Neil says, but he’s smiling, and Max is grateful for two things, really. He focuses on that, and tries not to think that in a few days, he’ll be losing both of them.

-3

Gwen stops him outside the Mess Hall, waving Nikki and Neil along when they stop to wait for him. She turns fully towards him once they’re inside. “You know how to use a phone book,” she says more than asks, squinting at him.

“I’m not a moron, so yeah.”

“You know my name?”

Max rolls his eyes. “Of course I do, Gertrude. Or was it Grace?”

She crosses her arms, narrowing her eyes even further. “I’m serious, you little shit. My name, first and last. You know it?”

He sighs loudly, matching her glare. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“And David’s?”

“Yes,” he bites out. “Can I go now? Is this game of ‘twenty stupid and pointless questions’ over?”

“They’re not pointless,” she says, and her sincerity is so uncharacteristically abundant that it hangs in the air, suffocating the both of them. He can’t help but look away. “Hey - I’m serious,” she says again. “They’re not pointless. Just… remember. Okay?”

“Fine," he mutters, still looking at the ground. “Whatever. Can I go?”

She sighs. “Yeah, kid. You can go.”

-2

They’ve spread out through the woods in pairs to collect the wood for what will be their last bonfire.

“You know,” says David (because of course Max had ended up paired with David), “if it’s – I don’t want to overstep –”

“About three months too late, camp man,” Max interrupts, but David carries on as if Max hadn’t spoken at all.

“– but you can call me. Anytime you need. Or – or want. You don’t have to need anything! But if you do need something...”

Max knows what David is saying. It’s the same thing Gwen had been trying to say the day before outside the mess hall, and he might be grateful, if he wasn’t so embarrassed that David is saying it out loud (the way Gwen, at least, had the dignity not to do), or so upset that it’s close enough to the end to warrant David saying anything at all.

“What,” Max asks after an uncomfortable pause, “you wanna be pen-pals or something?”

“Oh!” exclaims David, immediately latching on to the thought, “Pen-pals can be so much fun! Actually, when I was a little younger than you...”

He carries on, and Max is only a little ashamed of letting him. Even if he’ll never admit it to anyone else (even if he can barely admit it to himself), he doesn’t hate this, really. Not so much anymore, at least. Camp is ending soon. He might as well take comfort where he can – he hasn’t got long left, after all.

Halfway through David’s story, Max pulls out his strings and starts working. He’s not technically looking for firewood anymore, and walking around makes knotting the strings together properly a little more challenging. But David keeps talking, and Max doesn’t flinch away when a gentle hand comes down on his shoulder every once in a while to stop him from tripping over a rock, or walking into a low hanging branch. In fact, Max finds as they weave their way through the trees, he doesn’t really mind at all.

-1

On the last day of camp, he shoves one bracelet into Nikki’s hand, and one into Neil’s. He doesn’t say anything - just looks away, scuffing the toe of his shoe across the dirt. Neil pinches the teal and gold and pink band between his pointer finger and his thumb and holds it up in front of his face, letting it dangle directly between his eyes.

“Are these –” Neil starts, but Max cuts him off.

“No,” he snaps, “they’re just - I had some free time. Whatever. Throw them away if you don’t like them, or I’ll take them –”

“Aw, heck no,” says Nikki, already struggling to tie hers around her wrist one-handed. “This is mine, no take backsies.”

“What she said,” says Neil, clutching his own bracelet firmly, now, and looking a little misty eyed. “Is - do you have one, too?” Max holds his arm up wordlessly, so that Neil can see the identical bracelet already fastened around his own wrist.

Neil smiles, and Nikki, finally looking up from her bracelet (still untied, despite her efforts) says, “Aww! Bracelet triplets. We’d wreck some bracelet twins for _sure_.”

“Well, in certain cases…” Neil starts, but he’s immediately cut off by Nikki, who has already begun to chant:

“Power in numbers, Neil! _Power_! _In_! _Numbers_!”

And Max doesn’t know if they hear his laugh, quiet and restrained as it is, but he knows from the sappy expression on both of their faces when they turn towards him that they do, at least, look over in time to see him smile.

0

Max is the last to go, which he had expected, but he doesn’t have to wait too long. It’s only a few minutes after Harrison’s parents depart that a car Max recognizes as belonging to the company pulls into the parking lot. He stands up a little straighter, and David and Gwen seem to take this as some sort of signal, turning more fully towards the car and going completely silent.

It’s not either of his parents that step out, but he didn’t expect it to be. A woman wearing a dark pantsuit and darker sunglasses emerges, her hair pulled up into a severe looking bun – an assistant, probably. A new one that Max hasn’t yet met, or maybe an old one who just hadn’t been sent by the house before.

David seems unsure as she approaches their little group of three, glancing between the woman and Max as if trying to determine whether they look enough alike to be family, or whether Max knows her at all.

He seems to make a decision as the woman finally reaches them, and steps towards her, holding out his hand to shake. “It’s nice to meet you! I’m Max’s counselor, David -”

“A pleasure,” she says, reaching out to shake his hand. She drops it after two quick pumps of her arm and pulls an ID from a pocket in the lining of her blazer, holding it out for David to inspect. “I’ve been sent to collect him. I think you’ll find that my name is on the list of individuals you’re approved to release him to.”

David’s hand is still halfway outstretched. He’s smiling, and it’s not fake, exactly, but it does look slightly forced. “Right! Gwen, do you have the – “

“Right here,” says Gwen, holding out her clipboard.

David takes it from her, glancing between the paper and the ID. “Okay, well – everything seems to be in order –”

The woman nods, immediately putting the ID away and looking, for the first time, towards Max. “Is this all you have?” she asks, gesturing to the single suitcase and sleeping bag in front of him.

“Yup.”

“Excuse me,” David interjects, sounding a bit strained, “I do have the deposit for his parents, and –”

“I’m only here to pick him up,” the woman interrupts. “You can work the rest out with him.” She lifts his bag and suitcase off of the ground with surprising ease, tucking one under each arm. “Would you like me to take your backpack, as well?” she asks.

“No,” he says clutching the straps a little tighter, “I’ll keep this one with me.”

“I’ll be in the car when you’re done, then,” she says, and nods again, just once, before turning away and walking back towards the car.

Max watches her. He watches the way she doesn’t trip or stumble across the rocky ground in her heels, or slouch under the weight of his bags. He wonders, for a moment, how she and every other person his parents have tasked with minding him can live like this. Maybe people like her are made in factories somewhere, so that people like his parents have someone to follow their directions and run their errands and do things they can’t be bothered to do themselves, like come to collect their only child after months apart and take him to an empty house where the only thing he has ever been is lonely.

David and Gwen are both quiet as she walks away, and it’s only when she is once again hidden away by the car’s darkly tinted windows that they seem to recover from their shock.

“Well, I…” David clears his throat, passing the clipboard back to Gwen and handing Max a thin, white envelope. “Here’s the security deposit for your parents. That’s it, really. This is, um. This is goodbye, then.”

“Yeah,” says Max, and he should turn around. Should walk over to the car, open the door, fall asleep on the long, silent drive home (and it _will_ be silent, he knows). He just grips the straps of his backpack tighter. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, he doesn’t even know what, and is preemptively embarrassed by his own weakness.

Gwen saves him, as has become her habit, by stepping forward before he can speak. She nods at him, just once, and it’s nothing like when the woman in the car did it. It’s not empty or perfunctory the way it was when it came from the woman, or the way it would have been had it come from any of the other people Max has spent his life in the care of. It’s just Gwen, and she’s not nodding at an inconvenience she has to deal with or at an errand she has accomplished. She’s nodding at Max.

He nods back.

Gwen looks at him for a long moment, and then pats him on the shoulder in a way that could almost be called tender. “Remember the phonebooks,” she says.

“Right,” he says, already knowing he’ll never use one. She steps back, away from him, and he doesn’t know why it hurts.

“Alright,” says David, clapping his hands together after a lengthy pause, “is there anything else, Max? Anything at all?”

“No. No, I’ve got everything.”

“Okay,” David says earnestly, his smile wobbling just slightly. “Okay, well, it’s been – it was a great summer, Max! The best yet. We’d love to have you back next year. We’d really, really love it.”

“Yeah,” says Max, “I’ll see what I can do.”

And then it’s quiet again, and Max knows like he knows that sunsets are pink and grass is green and his house will be empty when he gets there that David won’t ever tell him to go. He’d wait around all night, probably, until Max was ready to walk away. He can’t make David do that, won’t, but still – he hesitates. He stands in front of David, and thinks that this might be the last time someone smiles at him for a very long time. This might be the last time he gets to stand in front of a real person, the last time he gets to be with real people, people who think that he’s real, too.

It might be the last time he’ll ever see either of them. Because of that, and because (even if he hates himself for it) he really does want to, he leans forward and wraps his arms around David’s legs in a hug that’s both awkward enough that he wishes he hadn’t done it and comforting enough that he doesn’t ever want to let go. It’s a little like the time he hugged David outside the pizza place, but also not like that at all - because this time, David hugs back. He puts one arm around Max’s shoulder and lets his other hand cradle Max’s head. It feels just the way Max would have thought a hug would, if he’d spent any time imagining it, and for a few moments Max stands still, holding on to the first person who ever treated him like he was worth making a friendship bracelet for.

The assistant in the car doesn’t honk the horn. She doesn’t call out to them, or give any indication that she sees them at all. But she does see them, Max knows, and she’s waiting, and the last thing Max needs is word to get back to his parents that he’s been _difficult_, so he pulls away from David too soon. David lets go as soon as Max does, but he doesn’t seem happy about it. For once, he doesn’t seem happy at all.

“Well…bye,” Max says, because he has nothing else for them.

And Gwen says, “Bye, kid.”

And David says, “Goodbye, Max.”

And Max turns around, and he walks away. He gets into the car with a woman whose name he still doesn’t know, will probably never know, and as soon as his seatbelt is buckled, they’re moving. He twists around as far as he can in the back seat, just in time to see Gwen step forward to put a hand on David’s shoulder. The two of them stay that way for a long time. There are no curves or bends in the road, no trees to obscure their view, and they watch the car for as long as they can, until it’s past the horizon, too far away for them to see.

Max knows it won’t make things any easier, but he can’t help it: he watches them right back.

\+ 1

He saves unpacking for the next day. The assistant had left as soon as he’d pulled his bags out of the trunk, not even waiting to make sure he made it through the door, and with his parents gone and the help for the new season not yet arrived, it’s not like there’s anyone to nag him about it.

The fridge is stocked with bread and peanut butter and eggs and rice and orange juice, and the cupboards, when he checks, have got cups and plates and silverware that were left behind at the end of spring. It’s enough to last him until the first wave of workers comes, at least. Other than that, the house is empty of anything but dust and sheet-covered furniture, and it will remain that way until the preliminary cleaning service arrives. After they’re done, the real maids will come to keep the house tidy, and the kitchen workers will arrive soon after that. His tutors will come even later, and he’ll start lessons when they do, and that will be it.

He tries to enjoy his last few days of cold, gray, freedom. For some reason, it’s not as easy as it has been in previous years. He hadn’t minded being alone so much, before. He was used to it. He’s not, anymore. He doesn’t know if he wants to be.

When Max does get to unpacking, he’s only a little surprised when he finds a masterfully made bracelet tucked into the front pocket of his suitcase. It’s got M A X stitched into it in large blue letters, and the yellow background (far too cheery for Max’s tastes) is almost the exact shade of the Camp Campbell t-shirts.

He doesn’t put it on. He tucks it into his sock drawer instead, along with the scrap of paper that Neil and Nikki had written their phone numbers on, the one that Nikki had tried to slip into his hoodie pocket right before she left, when she thought he wouldn’t notice. He had noticed. He’d let her do it anyways.

Once fall officially starts, it’ll probably be awhile before he’s allowed outside. He wonders when the next time he’ll get to see a lake will be, or an animal, or even a tree. He wonders when he’ll next get to talk to a real person, someone who thinks that he’s real, too. He wonders if anyone working in the house this year will know how to make friendship bracelets.

Max thinks of the bracelet on his wrist, and the one tucked away in his drawer. He thinks of the one he left back at camp, on the desk in the counselor’s cabin where he knows David will find it. He’s still proud of that one; it had been his best yet, green like the trees and blue like the sky and yellow like those itchy, cheery, terrible shirts. Outdoor colors, camping colors, _real_ colors: colors Max knows by heart. Colors that mean something to him, now. It had taken him less than three months to forget what it was like to live alone and gray and empty, but he has a feeling he won’t forget this quite so easily. By the time next summer rolls around, who knows? He might actually be willing to admit he misses them.

*

*

*  
_ “If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” _  
\- Winnie the Pooh

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally the first fic I've ever written, so if it makes you feel any type of way pretty please let me know how I did - comments, criticism, whatever floats your boat:)


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